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Brotherhood of Magi
The first use of wizardly magic coincided with the beginnings of the Age of Giants, approximately 1379 BC. The mages of the day realized how defenseless their art was in its infancy, and banded together to keep magic alive through the War of the Giants. They formed the group known as the Brotherhood of Magi. This brotherhood was created to assure that loyalty to magic was placed before each wizards individual ambitions. Looked at thorough the lens of history, it can be said that they failed in these aims. War of Skorrion (950 BC) In the year 950, the Brotherhood faced its first test. Up until this point the Brotherhood had spent all their time creating and codifying the art of Wizardly Magics. It was during this time that the 30 original schools of magic were created, each presenting a seperate way of understanding and performing magic. It was also in this time that the various schools began vying for top honors among each other. However this blissful time of scholarly pursuit were not to last forever. In northern Fetesca, where the Brotherhood was based, lived a Great Wyrm Shadow Dragon, Skorrion. Skorrion became jealous of the power wielded by the mortals. He raised huge armies of creatures and began to destroy the outlying schools of the Brotherhood. The brotherhood was far too spread out to mount any great defense and it seemed all was lost. Just when the battle was at its most grim, two heroes rose from the Brotherhood’s ranks, Naz Kroan, Headmaster of the School of Necromancy, and Lane Beril Headmaster of the School of Divination. Using powerful magic to predict Skorrion's moves Lane allowed Naz Kroan to raise armies of the dead in time to stop Skorrion's armies. With the armies destroyed the two mages went to do battle with the Wyrm. After a long battle, Naz Kroan defeated Skorrion with the use of powerful magical items he had created: The ring of the Necromancer, and the Armour of the Undead. However Naz Kroan died of wounds from the battle. Lane returned to the Brotherhood with the body of his friend, who was declared a hero. To ensure that they would never be used for evil, Naz Kroan's weapons were handed over to the priesthood of Jhonus to be kept safe for all eternity. In celebration of their victory, the Brotherhood created a great city on the site of the battle: Drem. The Empire of Drem Drem was created to be the center of magical studies on Meaghana. It was created fully from the magic of the 30 high mages, or Archmagi as they called themselves. The City of Drem was created in the year 945 BC. The magics of cloaking upon it were so powerful that Drem was completely ignored during the War of the Giants. It was said that the most powerful items known on Meaghana were created this at this time. Surely no greater place was there for mages on Meaghana. Unfortunately this lead to oppression of the normal folk of Drem. After the War of the Giants, Drem was the only city in Fetesca that was undamaged by the fighting, and the Wizards declared themselves the true rulers of Fetesca with Drem as the Capital. In order to act as the capital of Fetesca, Drem had to remove the spells of Cloaking on the city. The War of Brothers In the year of 695 BC, the Mages had total control of Fetesca for about 250 years and some of them wanted more. However this did not sit well with many of the schools, who thought the Brotherhood had given up wizardly pursuits for secular power. In an attempt to unite the Brotherhood in the cause of conquest Naz Jeris, current head of the school of Necromancy, attacked the school of Divination; among who were his staunchest opposition. Several other schools joined the attack while the majority took to the defense of the Diviners. The war killed many thousands of people and the magic released poisoned the land and eventually completely destroyed Drem. This is when the 8 lost schools were exterminated. After the war, which lasted 3 years, the Supporters of the Necromancers were driven out of Fetesca and into Arakeen. The losers united under the name Brotherhood of the Dark Cabal. The winners reformed their organization as the Academy of the Arcane, and moved their towers and operations to the new capital of Fetesca, Hosiana. The Warring Times After the War of Brothers, the two mage groups sought to destroy each other over the right to control the shaping of magic on Meaghana. This was a war of ideology as much as, if not more so, than of fighting. Over the years the battles rarely erupted in large-scale wars of their own. The mages prefered to use the wars continually held by their perspective countries as a cover for their battles. These battles were scattered between isolated incidents of co-operations between the two organizations. One of these incidents, during the Great Goblin Wars of 65 AC, was intended to move the center of magical study on Meaghana to the Ethereal plane, to prevent the loss of magical lore to the Goblin Forces. A mishap, due to the mages inability to trust one another, resulted in the Mages of both the Academy and the Dark Cabal being trapped with in a temporal vortex; in effect held static in time. The Dark Ages and the end of the Brotherhood During the Dark Ages, the dissapearance of the Dark Cabal and the Academy caused many common folk to distrust magic. The bard's tales of the day presented them as self important cowards, who ran rather than aid the common people against the Goblin Forces. Witch-hunts became common place and many wizards were put to death, their lore lost. It was only with the Creation of the War Wizards of Fetesca, by a wizard named Valin Dagnir, which Mages began to be looked at as useful and not evil. In an attempt to recover the ancient order’s knowledge, Valin Dagnir discovered the lost wizards and returned them to Meaghana. The world that the Academy and the Cabal returned to was a very different place. Several mages of the Academy left to join the War Wizards and the entire school of Wild magic split off on its own. With this blow, the Academy of the Arcane decided to remove itself from Fetesca, in hopes that its distance from the mighty country would keep it out of political trouble, and laid claim to the abandoned cities of the grey elves in Asteria. The Dark Cabal strengthened their connection with the newly reformed Empire of Arakeen. However the strength of both the Academy and the Cabal was waning. With the influx of unaligned mages, their grip on the study and control of magic was slipping. Many of the mages are unsure of how to react to this and had fallen back to simply doing what they could to counter the actions of their opposite. This prevented either group from dealing effectively with the problems of the day. The War Wizards, in their own way, are just as damaging to the forces of magic. With their total focus on the destructive powers of magic, and their willingness to use them, the War Wizards imparted a general fear of magic to the populace of Meaghana that has never been known. This has caused many local rulers to deny wizards the right to open schools and teach on their lands. This lead to a shortage of wizardly kobars, and many new students were going untaught, their talent wasted. Finally realizing that the way of the original Brotherhood had failed, the two orders met in 545 AC. Agreeing that their original purpose had failed, the remaining schools restructured themselves into the Orders of High Wizardry, bringing an official end to the Brotherhood of Magi. Category:Magic Category:Organizations and Institutions